1. UMBRELLAS. (points for not swearing!)
So on Friday night, I went up the Eiffel Tower. Awesome, sparkly, obnoxious PDAs, etc. Also, a gift shop. Several actually, on each level of the tower. Obviously one of the worst places to buy something if you care about not getting ripped off, right? Well. Guess what? The freaking EIFFEL TOWER/PARIS -THEMED umbrellas (cuter/more interesting/a better souvenir than my plain black one) AT THE TOP OF THE TOWER were CHEAPER than my dumb boring overpriced MONOPRIX one! GRRRAAAAAGGGGGHHHH! and the difference was significant; at least two nutella paninis worth. but I am done.
2. DOORS. Sometimes a challenge, sometimes AWESOME.
AWESOME:
Many many weeks ago, in the distant corners of this blog and my mind, I didn't know how to open the door of my apartment building. WHATTT?! I realize this is absurd, je me smh.* Anyway, one day I came home and waved my weird little key thing at the weird little key thing reader, reaching for the handle to pull the door open. Suddenly, BEFORE I TOUCHED IT, the door swung open towards me! ALL BY ITSELF. Naturally, the first thing that comes into my Roald Dahl-reading, Harry Potter-loving brain is that I moved it with my mind! I am Matilda! My Hogwarts acceptance letter delivery owl really did just get lost in the Seattle cloud cover! This approximately 2 second period (which is 1.75 seconds longer than it really should have been) was one of the greatest moments of my life. Unfortunately, then reality caught up to me (or I caught up to it), and I realized that en fait it was the weird little key thingy that now triggered the door to open automatically because of our neighbor who uses a wheelchair. What a letdown.
CHALLENGE:
So, just when I thought I was really getting good at going in and out of places using those flaps they call doors, I have a really embarrassing moment. Or just like, how do I function in the world when I am une centimètre from doing things like this ALL THE TIME? Good question.
So half of last week was this awkward time where my NaviGo, my metro pass, wasn't usable because November had ended and I didn't want to pay the weekly price for 4 days. So I bought a carnet and just tried to beat the system whenever no one was looking. (don't tell!) Well, I really wanted my (rawther expensive) tickets to be reusable, so I put an old one into the machine, and after some fiddling around, the turnstile let me go through. Success! you might be thinking. No my friends, not success. There is a flap thing (enough like a door to be in this post) on the other side of the turnstile to thwart stingy people like me, which did not believe my invalid ticket and did not open. But I had my bag and (6 21 3 11 9 13 8) umbrella with me and was generally taking up space inconveniently, so to put it simply, I was stuck. I couldn't go backwards, I couldn't go forwards, and I couldn't move around enough to go over or under. Hmm.
This was the relatively quiet stop of Assemblée Nationale, so there was no one around to swipe their funtional NaviGo and give me a hand...even the ticket window was empty! I spent a good 30 seconds in this position. Evetually I managed to turn around to face the window and realized there was someone in the room behind the booth, so I threw away all dignity and began yelling "EXCUSEZ-MOI!" until she came into view and pushed a magical button to release me (sans billet!) into the underground kingdom of the Paris Métro. In retrospect, I could have coughed up another ticket from my carnet and gotten the door to open that way, but (1) I wasn't going to do that unless it was an emergency and (2) I was only interested in glamorous escape strategies, like shouting at strangers until they come to my aid.
Always use the buddy system,*
Clare
* franglinternetish for I am shaking my head at myself.
* ask me in person for a non-blog material (this was another low point in terms of my dignity level) story about why we use the buddy system. potty humor included.
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